I started up Terminator this morning, and noticed that it wanted me to use tabs instead of separate windows. Once I’d started some different tabs, it struck me that using the mouse to switch between them was rather inefficient, so I started looking for a key combination to switch.

And I found one, cleverly hidden in plain sight in the documentation: Ctrl+Page Up, and Ctrl+Page Down to move back and forth, much like screen uses Ctrl-A and Ctrl-P to move between panes.

Terminator is based on gnome-terminal, so it stands to reason (and also proves to be true through investigation) that gnome-terminal works the exact same way.

… based on “Much of the behaviour of Terminator is based on GNOME Terminal…” from Terminator’s home page. I’m very perceptive.

Now, have I switched from gnome-terminal to Terminator as a preferred shell, permanently?

I don’t know, honestly. I’m still playing around. Terminator is supposed to have some advantages for system administrators, and the ability to lay out shells sounds very nice, but I haven’t had enough experience with the app to say whether it feels good enough to be my default.

But there’s the whole concept of change being a learning agent. I learned something about gnome-terminal that was very good, and very useful, simply by deciding to wander off into the unknown.

“Oh, look,” I said to myself, “This is a neat feature, I wonder if gnome-terminal has a similar feature. It does! It does have a similar feature!”… and the world grows a tiny bit.

Moving to GNOME 3 was like this. I hated it at first, couldn’t understand why GNOME would do this to me (and why Fedora would allow GNOME to do this to me).

I installed Cinnamon to help, only to find that Cinnamon at the time was insufficient.

I went back to WindowMaker, only to find that I’d moved on from NextStep somewhere along the line.

Then it hit me: “Wait, why did they bother?” There had to be a reason; even GNOME couldn’t be so stupid as to totally cripple its users for no obvious reason.

I don’t think I need to explain that GNOME 3's adoption has been… rocky. The GNOME 3 developers have been just a touch arrogant in the whole process, and they’ve done a terrible, terrible job of helping the users understand their position. As a result, users haven’t understood at all, and have fled in amazing numbers. Way to go, GNOME 3! Who’s running you, Maurice Podoloff? Darl McBride?

So then I took a deep breath, and read up a little on GNOME 3, and learned just a touch about how to use it. I learned about the action key (which, oddly enough, bears the Windows logo.) I looked at the actual desktop capabilities.

I pretended that its lack of screensavers wasn’t a liability. (People like screensavers! I like screensavers! Screensavers are the real reason I tried MATE! … wait, did I type that out loud?)

The result was that all of a sudden GNOME 3 turned into a powerhouse. I flew from application to application, virtual desktop to virtual desktop. I felt free, even if sometimes I wished it were able to do some really simple things.

I wished it could so some simple things… like, you know, screensavers.

Of course, change works the other way, too. I may have mentioned that I tried MATE as a replacement for GNOME 3; MATE is a repackaging of GNOME 2.

It was neat. It felt archaic after using GNOME 3, and some things just didn’t feel right. But it gave me some ideas about how to use GNOME 3 differently (including Terminator and yumex) which have proven to be actually pretty useful.

MATE supports screensavers, incidentally.

Change is good; the wonder of computing is that you can try new things (Linux instead of Windows! MATE instead of GNOME 3!) without usually destroying the ability to go back to what you had before… and the ability to shift your mindset somewhat is very useful.

Tags

29 Comments

A good rationale and I love trying new things as much as the next guy when time permits... but keep in mind that results may vary.

I generally think that GNOME 3 is an improvement on GNOME 2... but that's like saying that I hate spicy foods less than sauerkraut.

I used to be a happy KDE 3.5 user (because it let me use my computer the way I wanted) but KDE 4 (even up to 4.5 when it ran out of goodwill) ignored everything I looked for in a desktop (stability, performance, a good build of Konqueror for use as a file manager and KPart harness in one) so I now run LXDE.

In fact, while it's not GNOME Shell, my brother just switched from Ubuntu's Unity to Lubuntu-flavored LXDE for similar performance-inspired reasons... after using Unity for months and Lubuntu-flavored LXDE for two days.

I will admit that GNOME Shell's dynamically-changing number of workspaces is a feature I've always wanted... but neither I nor my brother find the modern enhancements to be worth the resource cost of running a heavy compositor and "well enough" optimized apps just to get them. (I'll probably write an Openbox+Tiling-style config for AwesomeWM some day)

I know that I'll never use Nautilus now that they've started stripping away features I consider essential in pursuit of tablet users. (I'm not part of their target market anymore and probably never will be. I can't stand typing without tactile feedback.)

I think desktops are overrated, it is ultimately the applications that matter. Also, I think Gnome is not really for power users, it probably never was (I remember early in version 2 they already cut out useful functions because they might confuse new users), but it has become less so with version 3.

True. Back in the KDE 3.5 era, I used Konqueror as my file manager in every desktop I worked with because GnomeVFS never worked right for me and, nowadays, I use Filelight in LXDE because Baobab's radial view is a poor imitation.

Aside from the set of applications they often provide extra integraton with, I think the big thing about desktops is how they have a lot of power to help or hinder you in interacting with your apps. Windows 8's tablet-obsessed approach to switching tasks is a great example of that.

Efficiency is also a big deal. My mother isn't a power user, but she prefers to be on Lubuntu because it's lightweight enough to measurably improve her ability to do heavy graphics work on an old Sempron 2800+ with 2GiB of RAM.

"So then I took a deep breath, and read up a little on GNOME 3, and learned just a touch about how to use it. I learned about the action key (which, oddly enough, bears the Windows logo.) I looked at the actual desktop capabilities."

Statements like "GNOME3 is not ready for the power user", and complaints about resource utilization... I'm sorry... that is just nuts. GNOME3 *FLIES* on all my boxes, even on a five year old laptop I keep around. And I mean *FLIES*. It is fast. And with the improved SSE support in recent glibc and improvements in the latest GNOME3 it is even noticeably *faster* than it was under GNOME3 3.0.

And I'm a network and system administrator with 20+ years experience. I'm an Open Source developer. I grind jigabytes of data every day. I dream in XSLT. I've developed a component based BPML workflow engine in Python. I manage 300+ page documents in LibreOffice. Am I not a power user? Sorry, but GNOME3 is fantastic. It provides power and efficiency while staying out of the way.

Do not confuse "power user" (people who use computers to do powerful things) with "tweakers" (people who fiddle with computers to make their desktops customized and unusable by anyone else). "tweakers" will always pine for the days of KDE 3.5.

Power users will appreciate GNOME3 if they take a moment and learn how to use it.

That's the point. you are a network and system administrator for 20+ years.
Not everyone is. Now try getting someone train his hundreds of employees how to use gnome3 when they were trained to use gnome2.
Gnome has ignored businesses in favour or home and power users.

No, this is not the point I was replying to. I was replying to "slow" and "not useful for power users". Yes, it is different, and would require training/retraining.

>. you are a network and system administrator for 20+ years.
> Not everyone is. Now try getting someone train his hundreds of
> employees how to use gnome3 when they were trained to use
> gnome2.

Someone trained hundreds of users to use GNOME2? That is a very lonely business owner. GNOME is used primarily for personal machines and my power users. Why bend over backwards for a segment that barely exists [front-line clerical GNOME users].

And they will have to retrain for Mac OS/X or Windows 8 as well. The UI paradigm is changing. At least in the case of GNOME3 - very much to the better.

Ive used all sorts, and I agree, once you let get used to gnome3, it is greate for power-users and regular guys alike. If you can use a smartphone, you can use gnome3. I have it at home and at work. When people come around to my house, it only takes a second to show them how to use it. I just really love that I never have to use the mouse to move around my desktop graceful... Can't wait for unity's loose search HUD to infiltrate gnome and it's applications.

I have GNOME3 and LXDE installed on the same machine. I've had people who swear by GNOME3 confirm that the performance and responsiveness is as it should be... I'm so used to LXDE that GNOME3 feels unbearably slow by comparison.

Maybe it's because I value things like going from clicking a launcher to having a file manager window fully loaded and usable without further load lag in 500ms or less.

As for "power users" vs. "tweakers", I'm really curious to see how you defend GNOME's continued removal of useful features like compact view and the tree sidebar in Nautilus to chase some pie-in-the-sky GNOME-on-tablet-PCs vision.

For those of you that have grandparents that recently started using a computer, you'd know that one of the most challenging things to do is click on small things. The hand and arm work together to form a gripping motion, so click & drag happens when just click is wanted. Gnome 3 knows this, Gnome 2 doesn't.

Focusing on the article, change also allows you to apply data to decide if your assumptions were wrong. For instance, the lack of a persistent window pager was frustrating, but a window pager makes multiple workspaces optional. Now multiple workspaces is how windows get managed, allowing the taskbar window list to go.

I wasn't under the 'why did they do this to me' perception, but rather the 'finally, a desktop environment that uses my graphics capability and knowledge from the Sugar UI'. If it's about the users, I think Gnome 3 is a win. If it's about the future of the Linux desktop, I think Gnome 3 is a win there too. If it's about nostalgia, Gnome 3 doesn't care.

My only issue with it is that, as a skilled user with enough technical skill to be programming my own software and administering my own servers on a non-professional basis, I've never been part of GNOME's target market and, as such, their work to better serve their target users has made the desktop progressively less helpful to me.

When I become familiar with an interface and learn how to get things done quickly and efficiently with it, the last thing I want is for someone "helpful" to come along and change it so I have to start all over from scratch. I am not interested in the absolutely optimal way to do things, or in being on the cutting edge of window manager style; as long as I can get my work done reasonably easily I'm all set. Forcing me to relearn the interface periodically is not helpful. It is a waste of my time.

Moreover, a desktop is not a cell phone. What works well in the cramped space of a cell phone is terribly inefficient on the large screen of a desktop system. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Apparently both Canonical and Microsoft have yet to figure this out.

I have dumped Ubuntu, with its lousy Unity interface, and moved to Linux Mint with Cinnamon. I am very happy with it. It lets me get my work done without aggravation. I have the desktop set up just the way I like. I will not be going back.

I don't know about a desktop, but I think it IS possible to have a one-size-fits-all solution for many (possibly most) applications.

I forget where but, maybe a year or two ago, I ran across some very interesting wireframes of how one could use a technique like CSS media queries to incrementally collapse and simplify a UI like Microsoft Word from a full-size desktop screen, through a laptop and netbook and tablet, all the way down to something comfortable to use on a smartphone.

Another important factor is the lousy way these new interfaces were introduced. People performing a version upgrade to Ubuntu were suddenly confronted with a completely different interface. The convenient application launchers were gone from the panel. The well-organized menus were also gone; instead, all applications were dumped in a big pile that had to be searched through laboriously. No warning appeared in the installer; no dialog appeared to ask the user if he wanted to replace his interface with a completely different one. The decision was forced on people simply because some arrogant clown decided that it was in everyone's best interest to switch to the new interface, whether he liked it or not.

*That* is precisely why there is such a furor over the new interfaces. If people had been given a choice of either sticking with their old interfaces or moving to the new ones, the changes wouldn't be a big deal. But strongarm tactics enrage people.

My experience with the GNOME3 shell have convinced me that it is vastly misguided.

1. The GNOME2 concept of static workspaces in which you choose which windows go into which workspace is its most powerful feature. When I have a lot of tasks to do in a given day, each requiring several windows, I want to be able to put them where I want them to go. I don't want the annoyance of GNOME3 opening up a new workspace for me, then forcing me to move the window where I want it to be.

2. Which is more convenient - just clicking on a task bar button representing a window, and getting the window, or having to browse through a bunch of thumnails of all the windows, arranged in no particular order? That's the point. With Gnome2, you organize by workspaces, and the task bar goes along with the workspace. With GNOME3, there is no inherent organization of tasks. This kind of "computer knows best" attitude was annoying when automated text formatting features came into word processors. We all had to spend time figuring out how to disable them! It's the same thing with GNOME3. I don't want to have to fight with my software.

When you work using the "one window owns the screen" model (meaning that every window is maximized, so you never see more than one window at a time) GNOME3 probably makes sense. But to do productive work we nowadays have large screens, and often dual monitors. The idea is to put that screen real estate to work, and GNOME3 makes that harder to do.

3. Speaking of organization, the GNOME2 Applications/Places/System menu is hierarchically organized by topic. That organization adds an element of discoverability. You discover programs by their function. In the Activities menu of GNOME3, there is no organization, and no topic by topic breakdown. It's just a disorganized bagfull of icons.

> I don't want the annoyance of GNOME3 opening up a new workspace
> for me, then forcing me to move the window where I want it to be.

Ok, then don't do that. You can drag applications from the launcher into an existing workspace, or into the new workspace area - to have them start in that workspace without even having to go there. You can also drag windows between workspaces in the overview.

So I don't think there is a problem here, management is a bit different, but you can easily accomplish the exact same thing.

GNOME3 is very much aware of applications in-this-workspace, and is just as organized as GNOME2. Just look at Alt-Tab - the available windows are organized by workspace

> This kind of "computer knows best" attitude was annoying when
> automated text formatting features came into word processors.
> We all had to spend time figuring out how to disable them!

Or we learned how to use the tools - and the *POWER* they provide. Much like users who insist on doing manual formatting of documents instead of using templates and styles; thus they will never grasp why those 'bloated' tools are there. I felt the same way till I had to manage large documents and someone showed me the right way. I'll never mistake a text editor for a word processor again.

>Speaking of organization, the GNOME2 Applications/Places/System
>menu is hierarchically organized by topic. That organization adds
>an element of discoverability. You discover programs by their
>function. In the Activities menu of GNOME3, there is no
>organization, and no topic by topic breakdown. It's just a
>disorganized bagfull of icons.

How much have you used GNOME3? As I recall the menus in GNOME2 were a messy labyrinth of options. You just got use to them - they were a disaster. GNOME3 recognizes that modern workstations are complex and suitably kills the menu concept - good riddance!

GNOME3 offers discoverability, GNOME2 only made a lame attempt at it - one that turned users off and confused them. I hit "Alt-F1" or Meta to go into overview and then type "music" - BAM! There is a list of all the music related applications. Hardly a "bagful of icons". And recently used documents relating to "music" appear as well. If I have the tracker extension enabled I get a list of all my content that relates to music. Talk about discoverability!

Sorry, but you are *factually* wrong. GNOME is the discoverability desktop I have been waiting for since GEOS. All the related applications and documents just come right to the top - it is fabulous. Why anyone would choose not to work this way is simply baffling.

I always found it easy to find things in these menus. They are simple and make sense.

>I hit "Alt-F1" or Meta to go into overview and then type "music" -
>BAM! There is a list of all the music related applications.
Doh! Alt-F1, why didn't I think of that? But that's the point. There was no way for me, as a new user of GNOME3, to discover this magic combination of hitting a key and then typing. The menu is self-explanatory. Besides, it's a lot faster to mouse through 2 or 3 levels of menus than to hit a meta key, and then type enough text to get the subject. And what if you don't hit on the right category? For example, music-related stuff might just as reasonably be found in something like "multimedia" or "sound",
or maybe something else. Menus are like a binary search - a few quick choices gets you there.

The fact is that it isn't just a handful of malcontents who are trying GNOME3 and staying far away from it. It is probably close ot a majority of users, or maybe more. I have seen probably an order or magnitude more negative articles and messages on GNOME3 than those in favor of that approach. For something as difficult to define as "usability", this large number of negative reactions should not be rationalized away as people whose opinions are uninformed and therefore don't count. This represents a wide variety of people trying to do useful work, and finding the new paradigm lacking, compared to the old one.

"Besides, it's a lot faster to mouse through 2 or 3 levels of menus than to hit a meta key, and then type enough text to get the subject. And what if you don't hit on the right category? "

You are conditioned to use that mouse more than hitting meta key which explains the illusion of speed i.e. familiarity. Navigating through 2 or 3 levels of menu is very much a disaster in a waiting: wrist pain. In addition, consider the new users who could be elders and young kids who will use the desktop environment for the first time.

I have recently helped some of my friends to transition from Windows 7 to Fedora 17 Gnome editions, some of them thought the desktop was similar to Mac OS X.

"The fact is that it isn't just a handful of malcontents who are trying GNOME3 and staying far away from it. It is probably close ot a majority of users, or maybe more."

Those malcontents either refused to adapt or prefer to stay on their comfort zone. What they keep forgetting is life always changes. A good instructions should provide a basic guide to new and existing users who recently changed the system.

I partly agree that change is good, BUT the changes should NOT be made in the mainstream version of a software until the users want that!!! If for example the Gnome 3 version had a quick way to make itself like Gnome 2 then there would be little critisism and we would not have fragmented the developers or users among Gnome3, Gnome2, Mate, and so on - even Unity would maybe not have existed had there been a fallback while Gnome3 was polished... Change is good but not when forced. The result is then as seen a self inflicted fragmentation of the user/developer groups who feels they got run over. Then again - who knows what the end result will become - maybe Mate/Unity unlike Gnome dont have such a rigid stance against using good ideas made in for example KDE and we end up with a new desktop again that integrate the best of all worlds?

Personally I think all the desktop environments should only provide a flavor of the underlaying functions that should be shared among all (KDE, Unity, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE,.... the list goes on). I am talking about things like Search functionality, copy-paste between applications, file managers - why should KDE and Gnome use different code for this? Not to say that alternative options for how to search content in files, mail, calendars etc is pointless, however I do not see why they should be desktop specific? Why not make Dolphin, Nautilus, and so on desktop independent and let the user choose what is best for them?

Again - keep in mind that not all people have time to learn a "better" workbench layout every now and then - give them time to try when the time is right for them to try.

More common code definitely makes sense but there are a lot of reasons it's hard to pull off.

My understanding is that, in their most formative years, KDE generally came out with solutions first, which GNOME then reinvented because they weren't willing to budge on their dislike for Qt's custom pre-processed dialect of C++ and the poor performance of C++ compiled by older versions of GCC. (And that's assuming you only count the stuff after the Linux version of Qt got a GPL-compatible license)

That grew into a general rule of writing the core of GNOME in C, not C++. Apparently D-Bus is basically DCOP (first introduced in KDE 2, if I remember correctly), redesigned and rewritten in C to finally get GNOME on board.

I've also heard that, at least sometimes, KDE refuses to use GNOME-originated libraries simply because they consider the code quality to be too poor or the features too much work to reinvent. (While it wasn't an example of such a deal-breaker, much fanfare was given when GTK+ got support for putting widgets in an OpenGL canvas. Qt had support for that with input transformation months earlier.)

Also, I've seen quite a few examples of various individual developers working in or around the GNOME project simply not being the kind of people you want to rely on.

I know that, when it came to GStreamer, KDE actually did use it but, when a version bump (0.6 to 0.8, I think) changed the API enough to render their thin wrapper useless, they wrote Phonon, which is thick enough to allow runtime swapping of GStreamer, Xine, QuickTime, DirectMedia, etc. (To ensure that they could freeze the API for the KDE platform libraries for the entire 4.x cycle) In response, at least one of the GStreamer authors threw a tantrum.

Basically, the Qt-based and GTK-based library ecosystems have built up so much inertia due to their history and communities that it will take a gargantuan effort to take any truly significant steps toward re-unifying the underlying infrastructure. (Especially since the event loops, signal/slot systems, and so on which Qt and GTK+ implement differently are fundamental to the structure of existing applications and libraries.)

> Personally I think all the desktop environments should only provide
> a flavor of the underlaying functions that should be shared among
> all

Yep, and that is exactly what is happening. That is the freedesktop and XDG standards. This includes things like D-Bus, which is now used by everybody. GNOME is the pioneer in advocating shared-code and standards.

> Why not make Dolphin, Nautilus, and so on desktop independent
> and let the user choose what is best for them?

Because you can't. Integration is key to making an efficient seamless desktop. Much of the underlying components are shared, more so than years ago (thanks to XDG, D-Bus, and FUSE). More will possibly become shared but there will always be separate applications for different environments.

Discalaimer: I am not a Gnome user. I tried Gnome 1 and prefered KDE 1. I have used Gnome 1 and 2 and 3 for at least 2 week straignt to give it a chance. I have tried every desktop out there for 2 weeks. The only desktops I have stuck with longer than tnat have been E16, Fluxbox, XFCE and KDE.

If you know and customize the hotkeys, most any DE can be blazingly fast in switching between apps and virtual desktops. With Fluxbox I can take a desktop with 10 apps on it, put 8 of the 10 on different desktops while remainging on the current desktop in about 10 seconds. It takes me about 2 seconds to flip thru all 4 desktops.

I just find it funny that people are now saying "I really like Gnome Shell 3 / Unity because of how efficient I have become with the hotkeys". 10 Years ago when I said "I love how fast Fluxbox is with all of these shortcut keys". These pepole would have reminded me that Gnome 2 was superior because I could do all of that with the mouse.

Hi everyone. In full transparency, we've removed a few comments from this thread that do not adhere to our community guidelines. We appreciate your thoughts and opinions and thanks for joining the conversation. Please be respectful of your peers and keep the conversation constructive.

I got fed up of irritations in G3 and just tried KDE and it suprised me in a very good way. After few days I got used to it enough and it is in almost any way better than G3 and even G2, not to mention the disaster that is Ubuntu Unity. So yeh I-m a new KDE user and I have never been so happy with the desktop on GNU/Linux.

Vote up!

0

Vote down!

0

I am a writer, musician, programmer, husband, and father. I read way too much, and probably write too much as well - but my passion is transfer of information, so that's okay. :)

Main menu

The opinions expressed on this website are those of each author, not of the author's employer or of Red Hat.

Opensource.com aspires to publish all content under a Creative Commons license but may not be able to do so in all cases. You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site. Red Hat and the Shadowman logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.